It is possible to migrate a question from one Stack Exchange site to another by closing, but if I have a question that I think is on-topic for multiple Stack Exchange sites, is it OK to post it on both (multipost)?

For example, I have a question that's earned me the tumbleweed badge on SO and I'm not sure what the best thing to do with it is. It's about a web server so it might be answerable on Server Fault but it's really more of a programming thing, hence the posting the question on Stack Overflow.

Is there any way to make the question visible on multiple sites (crosspost) and then accept the answer wherever it came from?

Conversely many users don't wait for their questions to be migrated and duplicate them. This should be detected.
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TobuSep 11 '11 at 8:25

5

Crossposting is not possible on stackexchange, because it is not Usenet. You don't get a "Newsgroups:"-like header where you can mention multiple sites. Usenet tolerates some uses of crossposting (which is why the feature exists) but multiposting (submitting identical articles to different newsgroups) is frowned upon.
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KazMay 27 '13 at 20:59

7 Answers
7

Ask the question on the site you think is most applicable. If, like in this case, it does not get any answer, ask a moderator to migrate the question, or alternatively, delete it and re-ask it.

Each site is focused on a specific topic area. If you have a question you feel is too ambiguous, either re-think the question carefully, or do as suggested above.

99.99% of questions people have labeled as being applicable cross-site have been proven to be valid on a single site if written properly and thought through. SE is not a wild west for questions; a question needs to be worked on to be worthy, and if worthy, it will target a specific audience.

Bounty

Also, if you don't get a response, you can always set a bounty on your question, which will give it much better exposure. This will also mean you have a better chance at getting a good answer.

Specific Answer

Looking at the question you're referring to specifically, you're asking the wrong question and not providing enough detail. I have commented on your question and would suggest you update your question with more specific detail — it's not very clear what is going wrong, and without specific information, it is hard to try and answer your question.

The only valid answer I can come up with at this point is that it works perfectly for me based on what you described. The question — as is — is a SF question. However, if you provide specific information, it would be valid on SO since it is referring to the configuration of a development tool.

Note: I do not consider any sites valid migration targets until they are out of public beta. There are no guarantees that a current SE site will live past beta.

I must confess I was kind of aware my question wasn't particularly great but I've been wondering if there is a silver tumbleweed badge? Perhaps the rewards are motivating me to do the wrong thing ;) Anyway, I'll do some work on it. Thanks for the prod.
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Colin NewellSep 10 '10 at 8:57

@Colin Well you didn't do too badly, you even got Jeff to set a bounty on the question, which admittedly, I forgot to mention.
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BinaryMisfitSep 10 '10 at 9:05

Yes, I must admit that's scary. I'm doing some work on the question to make sure I clear it up. Honestly I expected someone to either say, a) you're full of carp that's supported or b) you need this new key in the new section or c) use WCF because it's no longer supported. I seem to have found precisely the wrong way to ask the question.
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Colin NewellSep 10 '10 at 9:08

13

The "each site is focused on a specific topic area" is clearly no longer true. How does this change the answer on cross posting?
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bmikeAug 16 '11 at 21:24

65

No offense, but this answer is nonsense. "99.99% of questions people have claimed as being cross site has been proven to be valid on a single site if written properly and thought through." Would you care to supply any justification for this? Proven by who? You have a link to a research study? I could make wide-ranging unsupported assertions too, but that doesn't make them true. I think it entirely reasonable to have a question that resides on one site be visible on multiple sites. That way questions of interest benefit from cross-pollination from other related sites.
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Faheem MithaDec 12 '11 at 22:51

27

I found this Q&A searching for an answer. Here's my case in point: I've got a question about SFTP and permissions on Ubuntu. Where do I ask? ServerFault? Unix & Linux? Ask Ubuntu? Any and all of these are perfect places to ask, but because the network has become diluted, it's now become a big question as to WHERE to ask. How about cross-posting, but the Q&A's are linked to the other sites so answers for one appear on others; plus, only one source of rep. Moderators could set what sites are related and therefore permissible. The Q could suggest where to cross-post based on content.
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Charles RoperOct 5 '12 at 8:01

1

@CharlesRoper I disagree. Any question can be specifically focusses at a site, and if you can't, the question is too board. I.e. Just because the question involves a developer tool it doesn't means it fits SO. ServerFault is for network admins, so is your question network admin related? Is your question specific to Ubuntu or do you need it to work on any version of Linux? Honestly, it is too much work for too little reward in my humble opinion. I had this question come up often when I was a mod, and every time was able to prove a question fitted on one specific site.
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BinaryMisfitOct 5 '12 at 9:00

7

@Diago, Hey no worries, I don't mind you disagreeing, that's cool. The problem is that I just don't know whether my question is a general server or Apache question (i.e. ServerFault), a general Linux question, or specific to Ubunutu. How am I supposed to know? I believe I have researched well enough and been as clear as possible. On reflection, this kind of cross-site anxiety seems only applicable to ServerFault/Linux/AskUbuntu in my (limited) experience. So probably not such a problem really.
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Charles RoperOct 7 '12 at 9:47

14

Your statements are very strong. Can you prove them? Saying that each thing belongs to only one category is pure nonsense. You have multiple tags/labels for your posts exactly because there is rarely only one category. Writing properly cannot change the fact that thing properly falls under multiple categories. Offering a bounty does not make your question exposed to the visitors of alternative sites.
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ValJun 9 '13 at 11:17

If a question has an answer which may or may not be satisfactory, can it be deleted or migrated?
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user262241Oct 30 '14 at 21:38

3

I will make yet another complaint about the "99% of questions are valid on a single site". This is impossible, because many SE sites have significant overlap. For example, Linux vs. Superuser, Mathematica vs. StackOverflow, Electronics vs. Physics (for basic questions like Ohm's law). Because of this overlap, there is a large number of questions that will always belong to multiple sites regardless of how well they written or posed.
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SuperbestDec 17 '14 at 6:09

I also disagree. The lines between U&L and AskUbuntu are an already-given example, but other lines between sites are similarily wrong. Not even taking into account activity levels. SO/SE/SF should have a way to show a question on a select multiple sites in these cases, but still treat it as only one question, especially if it was designed with the “unified tool” in mind.
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mirabilosMay 8 at 13:51

The "flag post" / "is duplicate" function only supports duplicates on the same site. What is the recommended way to report duplicates on different sites? Also: can't this be automatically detected? When the question is 99% the same? Example: question on superuser / same question on stackoverflow
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David BalažicMay 11 at 10:42

+1 Murphy's Law. Just because you gave the same answer I did, in shorter sentences, your going to get all the darn upvotes! :)
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BinaryMisfitSep 10 '10 at 8:47

6

While I can imagine the same question to be on-topic on the math site and the physics site, I don't think the same question could then be on-topic also e.g. on the bicycles site, the cooking site and the photography site. So I consider the slippery-slope argument invalid.
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celtschkSep 23 '12 at 14:23

9

It's a slippery slope if not managed by the community well, but the same goes for the Q&A's themselves. It's no reason to rule it out. If it's implemented and managed well, cross-posting could make a great feature for the network and increase cross-site collaboration. See my comment above: meta.stackexchange.com/questions/64068/…
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Charles RoperOct 5 '12 at 8:06

5

Slippery slope is a manipulation method. It is slippery slope to allow users to specify 5 labels (tags) in their posts. Why not 25? Think about it. Manipulation is what you use here. There is nothing slippery for a thing to belong to 25 categories at once. What you do here is trying to justify your magic numbers not as arbitrary rule but as something deeply grounded and suitable for all cases. No, it is not a best fit for all cases. The more categories you create, the less probable that particular case will belong to only one of them.
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ValJun 9 '13 at 12:02

4

@val if we allowed 25 tags, there would be 2 decent tags on a question and 23 noise tags. The net result would be a polluted and useless tag system. Without constraints, people make bad choices. See: George Lucas and Star Wars Episodes 5+.
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Jeff Atwood♦Jun 10 '13 at 17:32

1

@JeffAtwood Nevertheless, you slippery slope when allow multiple labels per post. I can agree that you can order categories in terms of their appropriateness and get a decaying curve. If decay is fast, a couple of first categories cover most of the area under the curve. But, if distrubution is almost uniform, as it happens when you do not know where to relate the subject, you'll need to pick much more best candidates to cover the field with good probability. The point is that when you have many categories to choose from, making a good coverage will need including more categories.
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ValJun 10 '13 at 18:51

Very occasionally you may want to ask substantially identical questions on two sites, to reach different communities. (For example, if you're looking for a computer application to perform a certain task, and you don't mind whether it's a local application or a web application, you might ask on both Super User and Web Applications).

This is the exception rather than the rule. The question you ask has to be on-topic on both sites.

If you really think your question belongs on both sites, it probably doesn't.

If you really really think your question belongs on both sites, link the questions to each other. (If it's not your own question on one site, you might just leave a comment.) This way, people won't waste their time duplicating an answer already written on the other site, and people who find the question later can read both sets of answers.

this can be OK, so long as the question is tailored to each audience on the different sites and is materially different in each case. Just to be 100% clear, copy-pasting a question across sites with no changes is considered abusive behavor.
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Jeff Atwood♦Jan 15 '11 at 3:51

User uses Unix community to ask why he should not type passwords into the command line, unix.stackexchange.com/questions/78734/…. I wonder why not in the security and what need to be tailored for the security? It is a purely security question and security aspect of the Unix. It is a specific aspect of the specific system. Why should one tailor anything? What needs to be tailored when you ask about complexity theory in signal processing? Should I ask about z-transform in comp.sci, control theory, dsp or math, which covers them all?
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ValJun 9 '13 at 11:46

@Val: The user wishes to know how the information will leak; all of the answers are highly specific to how Unix leaks the information. If the user had asked on security, the answer might have been, "because the information might leak." However, the user already knows that; they wanted to know how it would leak. In this case, security is an inferior place to ask that question; only Unix experts know the answer, but security experts often don't.
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BrianDec 27 '13 at 13:59

@Brain You have just convinced us that one label/tag is enough for a question. It is not. I am not convinced. Ok? Even if I provided a wrong example (which I think I was not because command line and strong passwords in user files is not something specific to specific OS, ok?), you should argue the general case.
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ValDec 27 '13 at 14:12

The proliferation of sites (particularly betas) makes this disparity a frequently recurrent issue and puts the growing Stack Exchange network somewhat at odds with a strict policy against cross-posting, especially in the long run as topic overlap increases.

Some wiggle room could help release a lot of this tension. Consider supporting related feature requests (see the comments for many more) and encouraging conscientious cross-posting practices (see @Gilles' answer here and Shog9's here) rather than simple discouragement. If done right, it could help build nascent communities and collaboration among them. To connote more positivity to the productive practice with an alternate buzzword, one could think of it as cross-pollination.

This should help those of you who, like me, couldn't understand why cross-posting is discouraged, when one's intentions are good (an interest in getting the expert opinion of two diverse communities regarding a question that is on topic for both).

I've discussed the no-cross-post debates over the months and I never could understand what was wrong with posting an identical question on two sites when it was perfect for both sites as-is. A question that I thought was fair to cross-post was:

Valuable to both communities

Worded perfectly for both communities without any change or "tailoring" needed

with the intent of getting two diverse kinds of answers on the question

In the edge case where the question is appropriate on more than one
site, leave it on both sites and let the users of each community
benefit from the information.

However

Here's the real underlying problem: The SE Network was not designed for duplicate questions across sites. That's the issue to which there's really only one simple solution: don't post identical questions.

With the way the Stack Exchange network features questions from different sites, if we didn't discourage cross posting (even when the question is very much on topic in both places), we would see duplicate questions featured on the front page, which would look a bit weird.

The whole "It's ok if you tailor your question to fit each site" idea, which is now quoted/referenced in all related meta discussions, originally came from Jeff Atwood himself (scroll up to his answer to see for yourself), and that solves the duplicate issue. Other than that, there's really no issue with duplicate questions, as long as they're good questions totally on topic for both sites.

Some questions can be perfectly on topic for two sites with identical wording, but the network was simply not designed to handle duplicate posts. Change the wording and tailor the title, even if it's already good for both sites - just make it different (This argument assumes that the question is truly good for both sites) and it's ok.

To anyone who says duplicate questions a bad in all cases, that's simply wrong! When questions are cross-posted with the right reasons in mind, in the right situations, there's nothing wrong with them, except the issue that I mentioned (the SE network's unified functionality).

So when you discourage users from cross-posting when the question fits well on two sites, explain this to them. It's not that the "tailoring to each site" is always necessary, it's just that duplicates don't work well in a network where questions from all sites are featured on the same page.